Recently on Tumblr I heard about the app Synesthesia Tool. Apparently you can save a copy of your colored alphabets, and when you read files via certain sites (more info in the link), it will convert the black text into your submitted colors.

Sounds pretty neat, but I have some questions for you all about it.

Would it be disorienting to see the letters in your colors when you're used to seeing them in black? Or would it be difficult if, unlike me, your letter colors blend when combined into words? Or perhaps if you couldn't get one color quite right, would it bug you to see it in that slightly-off shade?

The summary of the app on its Google Play page concerned me. It says "New findings have shown that it is possible to induce synesthesia by just reading a colorized text. This app is created to help you in your quest to become synesthetic." Now, I'm all for showing people what syn can look like for some people. (For myself, it's not too accurate, since the app can't show the black at the same time as the syn colors.) But to use it as a means to induce synesthesia? One of the qualifications of synesthesia is it has to be involuntary. If you train yourself enough that it becomes involuntary, does that really count? I'm not sure I like the idea of people trying to induce grapheme-color (or any syn) for themselves. Thoughts?

EDIT: Apparently you can't add your own colors, only choose from a few preset ones? (Let me know if I've missed something here.) Not cool, guys. This brings up another point for me, which is related to the second question. Say we were all cool with this idea of learning synesthesia (which I'm not). This app only lets you learning synesthesia from this only lets people learn 6 different sets of colored alphabets! No two synesthetes have the exact same responses! Imagine four people who have used this app and learned synesthesia meeting. Two of them have memorized the first colored alphabet, so all their responses are precisely the same (not to mention are pseudo-syn anyway). I don't think that sends out a good message or example or what have you for synesthesia and what it's like for people. What do you think?